Climate Change / Sustainable Development

The first ever Sustainability Report by an Indian university

TERRE Policy Centre, not-for-profit an organisation dedicated to cause of Sustainable Development, launched on the occasion of World Environment Day the first ever Campus Sustainability Report developed by MIT Group of Institutions in Pune.

Every year World Environment Day brings people around the world on a common mission to move one more step forward to contribute to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). TERRE Policy Centre, not-for-profit an organisation dedicated to cause of Sustainable Development, launched on this occasion the first ever Campus Sustainability Report developed by MIT Group of Institutions in Pune.

Hitherto, Sustainability Reports have been the annual records of the business corporations. They provide in-depth reviews of the actions taken by them on environmentally and socially responsible practices in their company strategies robust description of how their policies and practices are addressing today’s sustainability agenda.

“However, providing such information by an education institute and resolving to do so every year is trend-setting event in India’ , said Rajendra Shende, Chairman of TERRE Policy Centre. The launch was hosted by Dr. Vishwanath Karad, Founder and Director General Maharashtra Institute of Technology-World Peace University (MIT-WPU).

The report is part of Smart Campus Cloud Network (SCCN), a global network of educational campuses. The Network promotes ‘on-campus’ learning on SDGs with hands-on work by students using Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Cloud Computing to enhance resource efficiency and sustainable production and consumption.

The Sustainability Report includes highlights of the progress achieved by four of MIT-WPU campuses over last one year, since SCCN was launched there by India's Minister of Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar on 5 June, 2017.

The report also benchmarks the sustainability indices for the campus like energy use per square foot of built up area, trees per square foot of open area, management of e-waste, canteen waste, solid and liquid waste and sustainable transport. The report goes on to unveil the future plan and vision to contribute to SDGs.

"Smart Campus activities like reprocessing the waste within the campus could generate tomorrows business leaders," said Dr Dinkar More, former Director-General of Water Resource Board of Maharashtra, India, who presided over the event.

During the release of sustainability report, Dr. Vishwanath Karad said, “MIT is committed to the Sustainable Development agenda set by the Niti Aayog since 2015. MIT considers SCCN as laboratory for the future Smart Cities, a dream project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.

It is hoped that, henceforth, the other educational campuses under SCCN would also start releasing Campus Annual Sustainability Report.

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